Christmas Ghosts Don't Fade Too Far
by 10millionpeople
Summary: Ron cracks a joke to her and he can tell she's trying to laugh at it and it be believable. But Ron isn't paying enough attention right now to notice. But he notices. And he wishes, for once, that could be enough. / HHR, oneshot.


**A/N- Whoa. Wrote this a while ago. Like, was going to post at Christmas, but never did. Oh well, enjoy!**

**Disclaimer- No. Never.**

She moves little, says even less.

It's eight seventeen when he first senses her strange behavior, yet says nothing, does nothing, because he knows that behind his red hair and argumentative heart Ron will know something's up, too—and Ron should be the one to ask her.

So he doesn't speak.

It's weird, he thinks—being at the Burrow, having nothing to speak about. (The Burrow, he thinks, isn't really the Burrow now, because the Burrow was a place where everyone gathered and everyone was happy, and where everybody was struggling to talk to everybody at the exact same time, and where happiness oozed out of the very walls because for a while every one of them just forget about everything, and now they just... can't.) But it's their second Christmas out hunting and they're _so close_ to finding the last Horcrux that he thinks maybe, maybe, it was okay to make a little stop to spend some time with friends.

He's beginning to think that maybe it shouldn't have been so okay to stop, after all.

So he sits at the table, artificially smiling and maybe mumbling a _'thank you'_ when Bill passes him the turkey; trying not to brush the too-dainty, too-freckled hand away when Ginny reaches down to touch his knee. Because he loves Ginny, in a way; he really does.

(_"Oh, no, she's brilliant!... but we're just friends."_)

He's starting to wonder if his answer to Dumbledore in sixth year was him more thinking of Ginny, than of whom they were actually talking.

.

Later, Mrs. Weasley moves to take up the dinner dishes, and quickly brings out dessert. He doesn't want any. He eats some anyway.

.

It's ten o-nine and she still hasn't spoken. Ron laughs and smiles beside her through the too-long dinner, and she just sits with her hands positioned _right-knife, left-fork _but never really moves either of them because she never really eats, as he noticed she'd been doing for a while, either out of fatigue or lack of care. He thinks maybe it's both.

The War has left everyone tired, and if anyone deserves to be beat-up, he knows it's her. They haven't really spoken since Ron came back and opened the locket (he thinks that maybe, it was because what he saw Ron seeing in the Horcrux was all a little too much for him to think and he knew that if he had to face her after seeing that he might do something stupid, and stupidity is the last thing they need right now), but he knows everything she did for them while they were hunting, even what she's still doing, now, while they're taking a break. (A voice in the back of his head sounding a lot like Severus Snape mutters _"The Dark Lord doesn't take breaks," _and all at once he just wants to stand on top of the table and shout it.)

But he doesn't. There are a lot of things he hasn't been doing, lately.

.

Ron cracks a joke to her and he can tell she's trying to laugh at it and it be believable. But Ron isn't paying enough attention right now to notice. But he notices. And he wishes, for once, that could be enough.

.

At eleven fifty-two he decides to say something to her, because dinner just ended fifty-one minutes ago after everyone had finished talking about things they had no right talking about, washing their plates, talking some more, and settling down somewhere besides that blasted kitchen table which suddenly, to him, seemed so very big.

He finds her on the back porch that no one ever goes out on, rocking in a rocking chair, squeaking, back to the front door, back to now him. Some book lay open in her lap (a book of Muggle poems—Oscar Wilde, if he can read correctly through his age-old glasses) and while she is looking at the page and biting her lip in the way he had just recently realized she does while she thinks, he can see the cogs moving still in her brain and knows it's all a façade. She's not really reading. She's not really doing anything, at all.

Studying her closer than he should and closer than is appropriate, he realizes her lip is bleeding from where she punctured it with her teeth. Starting to feel like Mad-Eye when he realizes he still hasn't moved from behind her and still hasn't moved from the door, he paces a bit before he hears a faint _I can hear you, you know_ from the rocking chair, still rocking, still squeaking.

Yeah. He knows.

And so he walks in front of her until she can see him and sits at her feet because there are no other chairs present.

They don't say much, until he mumbles out something close to _you're not really reading that_ and she snaps the book shut. (He thinks that she probably knows that she wasn't reading, and didn't need someone to remind her, and he learned it's always good not to question the awareness of her intelligence, just like you never question the effectiveness of your firewood.) She leans back, and then gets up in a flurry, rushing inside, leaving the rocking, squeaking chair behind her, in front of him.

He remains on the ground.

.

He swears to Merlin he's going to fix that chair. The squeaking is giving him more of a migraine than it should. He wants some Muggle oil to spray on it, because for once, he doesn't feel like using magic.

.

When he hears her crying in her bedroom shared with Ginny at four thirty-six in the morning, he wants so badly to go in there and hold her and tell her everything will be okay all while she tries to explain what's wrong between breaths and he tries to soothe her between heartbeats. But he just lies on the bed, pretending to be asleep more for himself than the fear of someone finding him awake, because God knows Ron sure isn't going to wake up, and no one really comes into their room until they're already up and gathering supplies for showers.

He never knew her to be anything of an insomniac, even when they were living like refugees except not, (but it's the same basic idea, he chides) and she would stay up late to acquire information, but never because she just _couldn't_ sleep. And if anyone should know this stuff, he should know this stuff, considering he spent most of last year alone with her while Ron exploded and covered them both in ash. At least, he thinks that's what happened. He knows he was alone with her, if not the reason, but his mind is all foggy from last year. (And for some reason he can't fully understand and doesn't really want to fully understand, he thinks that's probably for the better.)

But he just listens to her. He listens to her, and prays for a release for her, and waits. He thinks that maybe, at 6:30, he'll be able to see a little bit of dawn shining through the window torn somewhere behind him, near Ron, maybe. Though, no one really gets up until near eight.

He has two hours. Or three and a half, if you want to look at it like that.

.

The window is nowhere near Ron, but Ron is near him and he isn't close to the window either. Ron is closer than him to the window, so technically, he was right. The window is behind him.

.

At eight twenty-one they eat breakfast, and when he doesn't see her there he silently excuses himself (because no one really will know that he exited, he thinks) from the table and pads upstairs. Noticing a wide-open door and no _her_, he takes the steps again and walks to the back door where he finds her again, on the porch, absent-mindedly reading O. Henry, this time (and his glasses have yet to fail him), rocking, squeaking. He immediately sits at her feet, and says nothing, until she does.

_You heard me last night._ And it's more of a statement than a question. He nods, and she sniffs, and for a second he thinks she's going to break character and start crying then and there but he knows the only time he's ever seen her do that is when she was tortured, and he thinks if there was ever a time to break character and just cry, that was it, even if it is so unlike her. (At least, he thinks, it's unlike her this year. He doesn't know if he can say the same for the ones in the past, because he's had many shirts soaked through the skin with salt and sweat from stinging tears and trying to hold them in too hard.)

But she doesn't cry. She exhales, and gives a small, sad smile to him, whispers _I don't love Ron_, and gets up and walks away, the chair rocking, squeaking where she left it. (And he knows that if she doesn't love Ron, then maybe, maybe there's a chance, and as wrong as it is he thinks that maybe, maybe it could work, because he doesn't even know if he knows what love is, but if he knows enough to know that he doesn't love Ginny, and he... _something_, her, if not love. But he thinks it's love.)

But Christmas is over and they will set back off tomorrow, and tomorrow morning he knows he'll kiss Ginny goodbye, and when they're apparating, Ron will lace his fingers with hers and won't let go even after they've reached the point, and she and _him_ will steal small glances when Ron isn't looking, just like last time.

But that's not happening right now. And all he wants to worry about is now. (He remembers some old Muggle movie professor telling his students to _carpe diem_, seize the day, and make their lives extraordinary, and he knows he wants to do that, and he wonders where he can meet this intelligent man, or if he already has.)

.

He fixed the chair today. It rocks now, and doesn't squeak, but he has a thick, black liquid all over his hands and none on his wand. She's kind of proud of him.

He's always proud of her.


End file.
